Apologies in advance if this has been sorted elsewhere but i cannot find any solution. (get poke me in the right direction if thats the case )

OK

FTPd distro contents to E, all lowercase, all correct sizes, freshly formatted E.
I have IRG off etc
gentooxx.xbe wont load from evox at all. just sits on the loading screen. Tried this a few times now, each time reformatting e. Even tried xbepatching just to make sure wasn't still in dev mode.

Hmmmm... try using the m8 bios, I believe it doesn't require any keys or anything of that sort. Also, look into Frosted Bios Loader or the PBL-Metoo package. They're pretty simple to setup. Frosted Bios Loader is on the Xbox-scene websites and the Xbox Scene forums. It's a legal download, so you can get it straight from the website. After that, use the M8 bios (included with the PBL metoo package), as it doesn't require any eeprom or rc4 keys.